Poem of the Day: ‘The Table and the Chair’

In roughly the same era that the French poets gave us surrealism, the English poets gave us nonsense verse—and that might be the surest guide to the difference between the languages. The 19th-century exemplar of nonsense was Edward Lear (1812–1888), who wrote “The Owl and the Pussycat” and many other children’s classics. In the tetrameter couplets of “The Table and the Chair,” he paints a surrealistic scene of furniture strolling out to take the air — for no purpose other than the comedy of the language and the nonsense of the tale. A poem to celebrate Lear’s May 12 birthday.